zompist bboard

I considered posting this article here, but something intervened. I felt sure somebody would pick it up. There is no other primate species that speaks. (The calls that many animals use don't count.) Human language is so completely unique, biologically speaking, that it may indeed have only had one ...

I spent some time in Montreal last month, and shared a joke with a bilingual (but raised francophone) resident of Ontario. I made a joke for which the punch line is, "I have peed in my hat." Then I realized I knew just enough French to translate the sentence. My effort was, /ZE pi'se O~ mO~ Sa'po/. ...

Looks intriguing. Keep up the good work. I'd like to know what the names of the major gods and goddesses of Lowan paganism were.

Germanic historic linguistics is a lifelong passion of mine, as you can guess from my signature.

Betty Cross

For 150 years, Sumerian has been cited as a classic example of a language isolate. Yet, in recent years, a Sumerian-Uralic hypothesis has been proposed. For the link, click here.

I'm not saying I agree with this and I'm not saying I disagree. I just want people's opinions.

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Count me in. I'm a sucker for that bizarre ancient language stuff.

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Viktor77 wrote: Love the hammer one lol.

I thought that was a judge's gavel.

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nils wrote:

The one on the left was clearly founded by Welsh colonists. They merely changed the color of the dragon.

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Ulan wrote: chuj flag

Looks like a rug.

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I don't claim to speak Latin, but with the help of a manual I could probably get the sense of a Latin text.

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GreenBowTie wrote:Here's my flag

I see. You've founded a gay militia group.

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In my experience, the most difficult thing for foreigners is the consonants. Certain consonants, esp. /T/ and /D/ are very hard to master. Consonant clusters too, esp. the ones involving final /s/ and /d/, are diffiuclt for foreign born speakers, and even for some American English dialect speakers, ...

Based on what evidence? The most significant reason English is different from other Germanic languages is the Norman Conquest leaving it with a huge fraction of Romance-derived vocabulary and loss of much of the native Germanic vocabulary. That and the fact that English wasn't written for about two...

I didn't mean to imply that Aristotle was an empiricist, only that I like him better than Plato.

Some good points about the nature of empirical thought have been made, worth much pondering. Thanks to all who have contributed.

And please keep it going.

Betty Cross

This has been a fascinating thread. Keep it up. To state my own bias: I don't care for Plato at all. I much prefer Aristotle, as long as you're talking about Classical philosophers. At heart I'm an empiricist. I don't trust any idea that can't be verified by human experience of the world. I would be...

TomHChappell wrote:An apico-uvular retroflex, made by touching the tip of the tongue to the uvula, should also be considered.

Not to mention my personal discovery, the uvular lateral approximate.

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No birthday cake for poor little Hitler While it has nothing to do with the story, saying "little Hitler" reminded me of this This was hilarious. Perverse but hilarious. I especially liked the part with the American kid at the end who didn't fight until the Japanese kid knocked over his cup. Betty ...

Xonen wrote:

Mecislau wrote:кывъыс kyvjys

<1098> for /j1/? Please tell me that's a typo. Not that I won't have to reform Komi spelling anyway, once I conquer Russia.

Just be sure you've captured Volgograd before the first snow.

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Malganic has two noun classes, Animate (based on IE Mas-Fem case endings) and Inanimate (based on IE neuter case endings). For all subjects, Nominative. For all direct objects, Accusative. For all indirect objects (recipients of ditransitive verbs), Dative. However, because early IE languages didn't...